The Superfund site in Mountain View includes portions of the former Naval Air Station at Moffett Field and areas which were home to facilities for Intel, Fairchild Semiconductor, Raytheon and other electronics and semiconductor firms.

– The super-heating process used to release toxic chemicals from carbon filters give way to dioxins, which can escape the plants and build up in the food supply. Dioxins have been linked to cancer and birth defects.

– Cleanup at the Mountain View site, and others like it, is not reducing the levels of pollution and in some cases the treatment is actually increasing the pollution in the water.

– The costs of the cleanup are staggering – the EPA estimates $1.2 billion is spent for every decade of ongoing treatment. The figure does not include the billions more spent by private companies to clean up their own previous toxic messes, according to the report.